SUMMER-IZEDFORYOU
BUILDING SYSTEMS
Nestled in the old neighborhood of Mattancherry on Jew Town Road, the site finds its place amidst the traditional courtyard houses of Kerala that once were occupied by the Jewish population of the city and old warehouses along the back waters that have now been converted into antique dealer’s shops. This part of the town garners more attention than usual during the biennale because of the very existence of the overlaps and layers and layers of history, culture and life it holds. The café sits on the edge of jew town road surrounded by houses (converted into shops) on an abandoned open ground with the Jewish Synagogue, the Ginger House Museum (one of the venues for Kochi Biennale) and the Mattancherry ferry terminal that form a triangle on the periphery of the larger site context. Taking the idea of a traditional courtyard house of Kerala further, the design tries to break it down into its spatial logics and incorporate them into building a space that of a café with it being an open space for exhibitions to happen. The structure then explores and builds on the ways of spatially organizing this space devoid of the concept of walls and rather using different levels to create the transition from one space to another. While the houses built in kochi use local materials like laterite, clay and brick, etc for it’s making, the structure tries to create a harmonious blend between the traditional building systems and the contemporary methods of building to make the space porous while still holding onto the intimate pockets of spaces the traditional elements create in a space. An example to point out would be the use of “Charupadi” a traditional element which basically is a seating arrangement for visitor or a guest to occupy, that protrudes out of the railing that the corridors or verandas have in the houses. while at the same time an entire façade of the space gets opened up with structural steel replacing load bearing walls with vertical louvers in between two columns that act as walls when required and porous spaces to pass through when opened, the surfaces of the louvers too act as pinboards to pin work on when required. It is often said that people appropriate spaces according to their needs gradually over the period of time and the structure attempts in a small way to allow that to happen with different levels of plinths forming spaces to sit as well as the open space in the backyard that would entice people to sit and pause for a moment once the regional trees are planted and nurtured there to form a natural canopy.
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Choosing The Site :
Out of the five sites that were identified across the town of Fort Kochi, the one that instantly caught my attention was the small old jewish neighborhood in Mattancherry. A single narrow road with traditional pitched roof structures on either sides where structures on one side are that of antique dealers shops while on the other side are the warehouses that sit on the edge of the backwaters.
Initial Process
After identifying where the site to intervene was at, the process for me started with studying the existing typology of structures there - that is, the traditional Kerala houses. And that is where I of derived my system from - morphing and changing of spatial type of a house into a cafe using composite structural system of traditional building methods with the contemporary ones in an attempt to open up the spaces more.
Some of the key elements I identified during this which I further incorporated while designing my space were:
1. The importance of orientation of spaces according to the directions they sit in. For eg, In a traditional structure a space like the kitchen is always oriented in the northern/northwestern direction.
2. The human to ceiling height ratio is lesser than usual bringing a certain humane scale to a space.
3. The central courtyards are narrower and smaller than what one can find in say the coastal regions of Maharashtra.
4. Most of the materials used in the construction are locally available materials like laterite stone, clay, timber, etc.
With all of this included, my design also kind of aimed at exploring the opening up of spaces and so I introduced the play of levels to it and completely eliminated the walls inside and used these very levels to create spaces and pockets to be occupied.
Talking Through The Design
The idea of designers creating spaces and those spaces getting appropriated over time by the people occupying them was something I kind of held with me throughout the process. The idea of a cafe having less of assigned seating spaces and more of open spaces that one can occupy as per ones own wish was what the introduction of levels in plinths aimed at. Taking in from the traditional spaces, the concepts of long corridors and Charupadi, etc I blended them with introduction of structural steel and vertical louvers that can open and shut according to ones own convenience.
